Examining firsthand the circumstances of tuberculosis (TB) patients in a Romanian mountaintop sanatorium may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for anthropology doctoral student Jonathan Stillo the ability to do so, which comes to him courtesy of a 2009–10 IIE Fulbright award, is an unparalleled opportunity to bring together his love of anthropology with his interest in eastern Europe.

Stillo, who first went to Romania on a Fulbright while still an undergraduate, feels the pressing need for ongoing TB research. “TB is a problem for us now, even though it may not appear to be,” he says, adding that while the very mention of ‘sanatoria’ recalls a remote time before the development of antibiotics, the institutions remain surprisingly effective in treating TB in Romania. Moreover, they not only provide restorative environments for patients suffering from the debilitating effects of the disease, but also serve as ad hoc homeless shelters and counseling centers for addicts. Thus the title of Stillo’s research topic, in which he tips his hat to author Thomas Mann: “‘Magic Mountains’ in Romania: Citizenship, Poverty, and the New Role of Tuberculosis Sanatoria.”

The implications of Stillo’s research stretch well beyond Romania’s borders. A disease with no known cure, TB poses a global health risk; in its more virulent, antibiotic-resistant strains, the disease could effectively be a death sentence for those who contract it.

Michael Eisenberg, a doctoral candidate in music and another IIE Fulbright winner, has chosen to examine late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century copperplate engravings housed in the musical archives of Bologna, Rome, and Venice. The title of his project, “Keyboard Seconda Prattica in the Copper-Engraved Toccatas of Frescobaldi,” like many dissertation topics, requires some explanation.

Toccatas are compositions for keyboards that feature fast-moving, lightly fingered passages. During the early Baroque period, the virtuoso musician and composer Girolamo Frescobaldi was among those who developed the seconda prattica of the toccata by lengthening the composition’s duration, heightening its intensity, increasing its demands on the performer, and allowing more improvisational freedom than its Renaissance antecedent, the prima prattica.

The development of seconda prattica toccatas coincided with a revolutionary and new printing process known as copperplate engraving that was far superior—cheaper, more legible and durable—to the older moveable-type process and permitted the faithful recording and wide dissemination of increasingly complex compositions.

“Notation was changing at that time,” says Eisenberg, whose study of Frescobaldi’s ninety-four extant copperplates will be the first substantive investigation into how this particular printing process dramatically changed the musical landscape.

Four other Graduate Center doctoral candidates, selected from a pool of thirteen applicants, will use their 2009–10 Fulbrights to define and refine their dissertation research: Martha Lincoln (Anthropology) will conduct field research in Vietnam for her dissertation “Climate Change and Public Health in Vietnam,” in which she will address how climate-related infectious diseases affect foreign NGOs, the Vietnamese state, and the partially-privatized medical sector; Yolanda Martin (Sociology) will travel to the Dominican Republic for research on her dissertation “Collateral Damage of Mass Deportation of Immigrant with Criminal Records”; Yekaterina Oziashvili (Political Science) plans to spend her Fulbright year in Moscow and traveling to Perm, Kazan, Ufa, and Chebaksary for her dissertation project “Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Stability of the Ethnofederal State: The Case of Russia,” in which she aims to identify how Russian Federation political parties mitigate the conflict between the center and Russia’s ethnic republics; and Analia Villagra (Anthropology) will use her award to support work on the role that monkeys play in the politics of land conservation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Clearly, the Fulbright awards support a wide range of study across the academic disciplines. Every year an average of 6,000 U.S. IIE Fulbright winners travel to over 155 countries to undertake research and to teach in universities and elementary and secondary schools worldwide. Eighty Graduate Center students have been honored with IIE Fulbrights since the school was founded in 1961.

For more information about the IIE Fulbright program, students are encouraged to contact the Graduate Center’s program adviser Rachel Sponzo at rsponzo@gc.cuny.edu and to check the Fulbright Web site at www.us.fulbrightonline.org/home.html. The campus deadline for application for an IIE Fulbright is September 16, 2009; students are interviewed following application for an award.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA)

In addition to the internationally-focused IIE Fulbright doctoral student program, which is administered by the Department of State, the Fulbright Foundation also sponsors the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) program, which serves a domestic agenda and is administered by the Department of Education.

Since its establishment in 1861, Fulbright-Hays’s mission has been to strengthen area and foreign language expertise, primarily among current and prospective U.S. educators. The program offers six- to twelve-month grants to colleges and universities for those doctoral students who wish to conduct research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies.

Support is extended to projects conducted in areas of the world that are not generally included in the U.S. curricula, making the program of particular interest to students in the social sciences. Between 2000 and 2009, the average DDRA grant awarded to GC candidates was just over $27,000.

Because DDRA grants are made to students through their educational institutions, all applicants are vetted through the GC’s Office of Student Affairs before projects are submitted to the Department of Education. The GC’s internal application deadline is late October 2009, while the official Department of Education deadline is in November.

Doctoral students may apply for both a Fulbright IIE award and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA award; however, if offered both, they may accept only one. For more information on applying for a Fulbright-Hays DDRA, please contact Fiona Lee in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs at flee@gc.cuny.edu.